Entries in Successor Liability
(32)

Anti-bribery and corruption due diligence should be conducted on cross-border transactions. The prospect of successor liability alone makes performing such due diligence a requirement for corporate acquirers answering to boards and shareholders, and private equity funds answering to investors.

Milpitas, California-based Dialogic Inc. said in August that the SEC had ended an informal investigation of potential FCPA violations by a company Dialogic acquired in 2010 and won't take any enforcement action.

1. Allegations against Wal-Mart -- Just when the debate about FCPA reform was heating up, the New York Times reported that Wal-Mart may have paid $24 million in bribes to Mexican officials to grow the business. The story showed why the FCPA is important. And it derailed the Chamber of Commerce's campaign to narrow the law and restrict the DOJ's enforcement of it.

In June 2010, a California-based VOiP company called Veraz Networks, Inc. paid $300,000 to settle SEC charges that it violated the FCPA's books and records and internal controls provisions by making illegal payments to foreign officials in China and Vietnam.

Just over a year after Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer first announced plans to issue “detailed new guidance on the [FCPA’s] criminal and civil enforcement provisions,” the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) today jointly issued this long-awaited formal guidance entitled A Resource Guide to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“the Guide”).